The Enemy Within

Chapter 1




CRACK!



Jason’s head snapped back with the force of the impact. If he hadn’t been bound to the chair there was no doubt he would have hit the floor. His severely concussed brain was having difficulty focusing on what was happening around him.

“You will tell me what I want to know, yes?” The speaker had a voice that managed to sound both raspy and yet also like bubbles coming up through sludge. When Jason had still been somewhat coherent, the effect had mildly disgusted him.

“You’ve done too much damage. I told you to be careful,” another voice, this one reedy and thin, said from behind the chair the human was shackled to. Jason was vaguely aware of thin, bony fingers grasping his head from behind as his implants struggled to help him remain conscious. He wasn’t sure the little machines were doing him any favors. No fewer than four aliens had taken turns over the last two days pummeling him for information he honestly didn’t possess. Not that he’d have given it to them anyway. They were the worst of the worst, scum who preyed upon the weak and took advantage of their plight for simple monetary gain. But lately, the group had decided to up their game and began trafficking military grade weaponry into the hands of small time criminal elements throughout the sector. This had elevated the level of scrutiny on their operation and gained them the attention of Omega Force, a small mercenary unit that took a special interest in just such individuals.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned, and Captain Jason Burke, Omega Force’s commander, managed to get himself captured during a routine information gathering trip. The group suspected him of being a ConFed agent and ghosted him off to a secure location before his crew knew he was missing. They’d tried the normal array of high-tech persuasion techniques to extract information out of him, but their unfamiliarity with human physiology had led them to becoming frustrated and resorting to much more low-tech methods. The beatings had begun in earnest twelve hours ago and were beginning to cause significant injury, even to someone so enhanced as Jason.

“If he dies I’d say that solves the problem,” Gravel Voice said with what could be considered a laugh.

“I don’t think so,” said the being with the thin voice. “If he dies, the ConFed will sent a team of agents to find him. Maybe even operators.”

“Humph,” Gravel Voice grunted, but not without a note of fear. Nobody in their right mind wanted to have the Confederation’s Special Operations Section coming after them. “Let’s give him some time to think about it.” A moment later the heavy door swung shut with a clang. A few more minutes and the motion-sensitive lights went out and plunged the cell into blackness, but not before Jason had already lost consciousness.

*****

Drip.



Drip.



The steady sound of something dripping onto the floor was the first thing Jason was aware of as he struggled to regain his senses. His implants had done an admirable job against the head trauma and, despite the excruciating pain, he felt much better than he had before he passed out. Barely. The liquid splattering noisily onto the ground turned out to be his own blood that was seeping from a dozen deep gashes in his face. Normally the tech in his body would have staunched the flow already, but the nanobots in his bloodstream were trying repair the underlying tissue and couldn’t do that working around blood clots, so they continued to let him bleed out for the time being.

He raised his head painfully and tried to look around. The room was pitch black so he switched spectrums in his ocular implants to infrared. A thin band of light showed through his partially open right eyelid; the left eye was still swelled completely shut. He switched back to the visible spectrum and allowed his head to sink forward to try and ease the pain. This didn’t go exactly like I’d planned it.

The door clanged open again and Gravel Voice and his wispy-toned friend sauntered back in. Jason raised his head and cracked his right eye open to look at them. They weren’t carrying any new implements of torture with them, so that was good.

“You’re a tough one, I’ll give you that,” Gravel Voice said. “But soon it won’t matter how tough you are. We’ll be leaving shortly and will have no further need for you. We’ll even try to make it look like an accident. I’m sure your ConFed friends will still bury what’s left of you with full honors.”

Jason had to work his mouth several times before he could speak. He had healed up enough to open his jaw, but it was going to hurt.

“You sure that’s a good idea, Corenntal?” Jason asked. Both beings started visibly as he used Gravel Voice’s real name. Up to that point he had played dumb during the entire interrogation. “I’ll tell you what,” he continued, pausing to let some drool and blood flow out of his mouth to clear it, “if you just set me outside and be on your way, this doesn’t have to be done the hard way.” The two laughed uproariously in their own bizarre ways.